Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B+ | 1 USERS: B+ YOU GRADE IT The Night Is Taken Back...
By Couch Baron | Season 3 | Episode 9 | Aired on 11.27.2006
And speaking of carelessness, Mercer suddenly sees that the closet door is ajar, and something within doesn't look right. He opens it to see an unconscious girl sitting in it, presumably the real occupant of the room. It's too bad she's not awake to see the fight, because it's going to be great. Veronica emerges from the bed and tries to stun Mercer, but he manages to grab her hand, so he only gets a partial charge. Veronica tries to flee, but Mercer grabs her by the legs and drags her back in a horror-movie staple that's scarier than it probably has any right to be. She tries to yell for help, but he blasts the music, and then gets her to her feet and menacingly asks her what he's going to do with her, but she slashes him across the face with her nails. That's a pretty harsh answer to a rhetorical question. Mercer punches her and snarls, "That's my face, you bitch!" Considering it's Ryan Devlin we're talking about, he does have a point here. He goes to look at the damage in the mirror, which is a reasonably subtle touch that I absolutely love. Veronica hides under the bed, and Mercer comes to get her, but before he drags her out again, she grabs one of the many large unicorns in the room. As soon as she has a clear shot, she stabs Mercer in the leg with it. Ouch -- that's pretty rough, as far as penetration goes. Probably no worse than he's going to be getting soon enough, though. Veronica runs out...
...and then we revisit the cold open. And not only did it work well as a dramatic device, it enabled me to go on autopilot for thirty seconds. Ahh. We now see, however, that the feet belong to Moe, and Veronica breathes that Mercer is the rapist.
Cut to Moe's room, where he's on the phone with the police, or so the tea-sipping Veronica thinks. When he hangs up, Veronica points out that they can't wait to rescue the girl, so Moe tells her to stay there while he gets a bunch of guys and goes down there. When he's gone, though, Veronica looks at a posterboard on Moe's wall and sees a picture of Moe...with Mercer, in guard/prisoner attire to boot. Niiiice. I remember thinking earlier in the season that two culprits would make sense, but even after I came to suspect Mercer's involvement, I never quite put it together that he had an accomplice, so I find this twist very cool. A lot of posters called Moe's involvement for the correct prison-experiment reason, though, so kudos there. And the Patty Hearst cast looks even cleverer in retrospect. Veronica's vision starts to go blurry. Oh, DEAR. She falls back into her chair and drops the mug, which shatters. She manages to get up again and try the door, but it's apparently locked from the outside, which I don't buy at all, but maybe he jammed it some other way. Veronica staggers to the window, but even with the GHB Unsteady-Cam working overtime, she can see she's way too high up to consider jumping. She tries to call Keith, but he doesn't answer. If he's going to make a big deal about telling her he's only a phone call away, it seems like he really shouldn't be screening. Veronica then settles into the closet, or something, and grabs some kind of makeshift weapon as she hears Mercer and Moe enter the room. Sorry for the vaguery, but I've got an extremely dark scene on the one hand, and an upcoming seven-week vacation on the other, so you'll forgive me for heading into the last commercial break.